Aircraft, large commercial jets, and wind turbines are vulnerable to lightning strikes. For example, aircraft are typically struck once or twice a year by lightning during flight. Unlike some older aircraft designs using all metal materials, some newer aircraft designs use conventionally painted composite materials that do not readily conduct away the extreme electrical currents (e.g., up to 200 kA) generated by lightning strikes. Some composite materials used in aircraft are not electrically conductive (e.g., fiberglass) or are substantially less electrically conductive (e.g., carbon fiber composites (CFC) or graphite fiber composites) than metallic materials. Thus, when struck by lightning, these composite materials may provide insufficient or no electrical conduction paths, and the electrical current from the lightning strike causes dangerous and costly damage to the composite materials. For example, lightning strikes can vaporize and burn through materials proximate the strike area, causing “direct effect” damage (e.g., vaporized metal control cables, vaporized resin in the composite with burn through of the laminate) or “indirect effect” damage (e.g., electromagnetic effects that damage aircraft electronic systems).